


Before.

by carpethefanfics



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Ian, Established Relationship, Eventual Fluff, Explicit Sexual Content, Fighting, Gallavich style, Happy Ending, Heartache, Heartbreak, I reference Monica's suidice briefly, I wanted to figure out why Ian proposed again, I wanted to get into their heads and their feelings, Ian Gallagher Loves Mickey Milkovich, Implied Sexual Content, Its heavy but it gets there, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mickey Milkovich Loves Ian Gallagher, Smoking, Swearing, Violence, implied suicidal thoughts, referenced sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:34:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24052963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carpethefanfics/pseuds/carpethefanfics
Summary: But Ian had hesitated. And honestly, Mickey wished Ian had punched him. He had felt wanted, completely. But it was barely a moment, a stupid fucking fleeting moment that Mickey never thought would come. “You ever get tired of jerking me around?” Mickey’s pushing him back now. He can feel the way his heavy palms slam against Ian’s chest. Ian’s grasping at him, a redness at the side of his eye already forming, a disorientation in the way he stumbles back.“Please- talk to me Mick.”Mickey can’t feel anything but rage and hurt and he just wants Ian to stop looking at him like he fucking broke him. So, he keeps slamming his hands until Ian’s backed up against the wall outside of whatever fucking building that they’re outside of. He wants to rip his head off. “Running off with your mom, leaving me at the fucking border? Huh? This some sick fucking game your crazy ass is playing with me?”And Ian flinches so hard he practically bounces his own head off the wall. His whole-body freezes under Mickey’s hands and his eyes are blow wide as Mickey slams against the wracked frame of Ian’s body one more time.He practically spits the next words in Ian’s face, “Fuck you.”
Relationships: Ian Gallagher & Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 10
Kudos: 90





	1. Like it breaks their heart just to look at you

**Author's Note:**

> Shameless always gives us just enough and never too much. But when it comes to Gallavich, I always want too much. So here's a glimpse at the the two proposals (10x08 to 10x10); what went through their heads and how they got to a place we all wanted them to get.
> 
> Play the song Before by Ulrich Munther or Unless It's With You by Christina Aguilera.

He walks into the ocean and its warm. He hums as it thrashes against his pale skin. The sun has barely risen, and all those faint red and orange hues feel about a hundred thousand miles away across an unfiltered blue green ocean. _Him_. _His eyes_. That’s why he had walked into it. Just to feel that again; to be embraced by it again; _to_ _be close to him again_. Its soft. For a moment.

But then he’s almost hips deep and it turns sour in his mouth. He’s choking on the moment and his eyes are stinging and he doesn’t know what to do because all he wants suddenly is to break out of his skin. He feels so hot, everything is hot and painful and _god_ , his chest hurts so fucking bad. _Is he crying?_ His eyes are practically burning and he’s rubbing at them and he’s fucking screaming. Just **screaming** before it all settles again. Before his eyes fix on the horizon again, on those reds and oranges that had brought him out here. His chest constricts. Then there’s that blue green again. _His eyes_.

Then he’s jolting awake like he’s just heard Terry walk through the front door or there’s still the faint ringing in his ears of gun shots outside an apartment too far south of the border. But he’s not there and Terry’s not here. _No_. _He’s alone_. He’s alone in a bed made for two and falling back against the pillow letting all the air filter out of his lungs.

He doesn’t know how long he lays there; he doesn’t know what time it is when he falls asleep again or when he wakes up and he doesn’t care. Sometimes he opens his eyes and it’s faintly light around him; sometimes it’s so dark that he feels like he’s been swallowed whole. When he does wake there’s a water bottle on his bed side table and he chugs it before he falls back into the mattress. The cold hits the empty pit of his stomach and there’s nothing but ache in his chest. Well, except maybe sleep, and sleep makes it better. For a few precious hours, sleep takes it **away**.

When his eyes slip open the next time there’s a warm hand on his cheek and he wants to lean into it, but he knows down to his bones before he consciously even realizes it that it’s not who he wants it to be.

“It’s okay to grieve Mickey. Doesn’t just happen when people die ya know? You can grieve life too. Missed chances, lost time... **mistakes**.”

But he just turns away from his sister, the ache is all too much.

*

“Mickey, wait! **Please**!”

Ian’s running down the steps of city hall with those stupid fucking papers scrunched in his hand, his eyes frantically wide. He’s stumbling after him down steps and across the sidewalk. Mickey can hear him rushing after him, hear the pleading, but it just makes his knuckles turn white.

“Go FUCK yourself Gallagher.”

Mickey’s not having it. Not today. Not right now. Everything around him is crumbling. Blood is pounding in his ears and he knows, he _knows_ , if he doesn’t get the fuck out of here right now, he might just rip someone’s throat out.

“I just need to know how you feel Mick. This is a marriage, and I love you but that’s- it’s _marriage_ \- it’s just so, so _much_. Gallaghers and marriage, we don’t- and I don’t want to fuck this up. Everything’s been so fucking good Mick-”

Mickey spins around at the feeling of Ian’s hand wrapping itself around his arm, Ian’s pleading is swimming in his brain as his knuckles crash across his jaw, “You already FUCKING did!”

Mickey’s entire frame is shaking. He had been **ready**. _Fuck_ was he ever ready. He had gripped that pen so tightly in his hand he felt he might break it before he threw it on the counter and looked up at Ian. But the crushing weight of realizing you want something more than the person standing beside you? The way that shit hits you in the chest? No, he hadn’t been ready for **_that_**.

God, just moments before he was sitting in that diner listening to Ian talk about loving each other, _trusting_ each other. Letting Ian reach for his hand across the table. It had felt like he was reaching across a chasm. Like Ian was finally choosing him; finally seeing them for what they could be. Like maybe Mickey was actually going to be able to breathe his first breath of fresh air in years. In that moment, Mickey was safe, comfortable, _at_ _home_.

But Ian had hesitated.

And honestly, Mickey wished Ian had punched him. He had felt wanted, completely. But it was barely a moment; a stupid fucking **fleeting** moment that Mickey never thought would come.

“You ever get tired of jerking me around?”

Mickey’s pushing him back now. He can feel the way his heavy palms slam against Ian’s chest. Ian’s grasping at him, a redness at the side of his eye already forming, a disorientation in the way he stumbles back.

“Please- talk to me Mick.”

Mickey can’t feel anything but rage and hurt and he just wants Ian to stop looking at him like he _fucking_ broke him. So, he keeps slamming his hands until Ian’s backed up against the wall outside of whatever fucking building they’re outside of now. He wants to tear his fucking head off.

“Running off with your mom, leaving me at the fucking border? Huh? This some sick fucking game your **crazy** ass is playin with me?”

And Ian flinches so hard he practically bounces his own head off the wall behind him. His whole-body freezes under Mickey’s hands and his eyes are blow wide as Mickey slams against the wracked frame of Ian’s body one more time.

He practically spits the next words in Ian’s face, “ **Fuck you**.”

*

As convoluted and complex and downright fucking devastating as it is for Ian to admit, Mickey’s **heartbroken**.

Again.

He feels just like he had that day he stood in front of Mickey after travelling nothing short of fourteen hundred miles and let two simple fucking words shatter them- _I can’t_.

After that, he had gone home and buried the loss. He committed to his routine and sought to fill the gaping cavern in the middle of his chest with anything and everything. But the only thing that grounded him before each fucking disaster had been Mickey. And whenever he thought of him, it just **hurt**.

But he couldn’t help himself either. He felt like he deserved that at least; to make himself feel what he was trying to bury; to make himself feel what Mickey was probably feeling.

He often thought about Mickey’s life south of the border in those weeks. The friends he would make, the work he would do, and the home he would have. _Did he think of Ian the first time he saw the ocean?_ When he felt the heat of the sand and the burning of the sun and smelt nothing but salt, _did he wonder where Ian was?_

Ian never told anyone that he pictured the life he almost had in Mexico over and over in his head. He would smoke out his bedroom window staring aimlessly at the lamp-lit street picturing a cove where Mickey would dip his legs in the water; a market where Mickey would graze the back of Ian’s hand with his knuckles; a home- just the two of them. There was nothing better to do when fighting his unbridled insomnia.

Except maybe ask himself over and over again if he had always been this cruel?

He’s asking himself that same question **now** as he watches Mickey stalk away from him on the busy Chicago street.

While Mickey had been gone, before Ian had created this new fucking mess, he had started up a habit of sitting outside on the porch just when the moon was at its peak in the sky. He wanted to look up at it and wonder if Mickey was looking up there too. Wherever he was. But then the sun would rise, and he would go about his life. Those moments thinking about Mickey weren’t few and far between then, but he buried them in the recedes of his memory. Two boyfriends passed, Ian spent 17 consecutive days in bed before his brothers made an appointment at the clinic and his mania _spiraled_.

Blowing up a van? Not on his bucket list. Prison? Not there either.

But Mickey was.

He wishes he could go back to that first day, to that reunion and tell himself to _hold onto it_. _To hold onto Mickey. Not to fuck it up again. Not to let that part of him that doubts every step he takes take hold._ But he can’t so, he just imagines a day better than now; imagines a Mickey who still wants him.

He’s got on the same god-awful yellow jumpsuit that Ian has and he's making jokes about how _he’s got bottom_ and he’s standing in front him. Really, truly, standing in front him with this soft smirk and these gentle eyes. And at the same time that Ian is absolutely elated, he remembers feeling so fucking **afraid**. Yeah, he had climbed on top of Mickey, feeling the heat of his skin for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. Yeah, he had earnestly licked into his mouth thinking _this isn’t real, he isn’t real._ But he found himself aching right down to his bones for reasons besides missing him and wanting him.

The Ian he is now wishes he could tell the Ian he was in prison to stop being so _stupid_. To enjoy all that he has in front of him- _under_ him. But again, he can’t, he can only replay his own stupidity in his head.

In prison, he hoped, like the fucking moron he was, that the reunion would be heat and passion and catching up on so much lost time. And it was, for a while. Until it was clear Mickey was different. Until it was clear that something had shifted. Sure, he was more than happy to ride Ian into blissful oblivion, but he wasn’t giving up his heart this time. Ian could feel it around them in the way Mickey tensed the second Ian’s hand touched his back; the way he never fully relaxed into a kiss the way he used to. Maybe it was prison. But in Ian’s mind, those two words had thrown them five years backwards.

So, Ian took what he could get and tried to do it with as much grace as one can muster when you’re trapped in a cramped cell with a man who wants to punch you almost as much as he wants to blow you. It was the Mickey he had fallen for after all- hard-fought, perpetually vigilant, hitting first and thinking later. This Mickey said everything with his eyes. And because of that, Ian had never told him everything he had thought during their time apart. He knew if he let the soft slip between them in a space where you just couldn’t be soft that Mickey’s skin would rile. The words had been on the tip of his tongue the whole time though- telling him that he couldn’t sleep for weeks after that day at the border. That it wasn’t until he found one of Mickey’s old shirts that he felt any semblance of peace.

Mickey would throw it at him. _Enough with that gay shit you pussy_. Even if he didn’t mean too. Even if he didn’t want to. But Ian felt like he deserved it. He deserved it then and he definitely deserved it now. He had broken his heart. And worse yet, this time, he was almost sure that he had lost his **trust**.

This time, with nothing but a pen and a promise and city hall, he had undone it all.

*

Mickey says it to hurt him. The moment the word leaves his mouth he sees the shock filter across Ian’s face, the fucking pain that Mickey has become so familiar with in their time apart.

 _Crazy_.

He knows he can be cold. He knows thoughtlessness like the back of his father’s hand. He knows he’s good at being hard to understand. It’s in his genetics- it’s the Milkovich way. His father had cursed him with every split lip and every cracking headache to be hard and stunted and everything in fucking between.

But he hadn’t meant it.

That’s the difference.

He wanted to take the word back as soon as it tumbled out of his mouth but sometimes, he’s more emotion than control. Ian does that to him; has _always_ done that to him.

And it makes him angry. But at the same time, he had missed Ian so much he could hardly stand it when he was gone.

Some days, he looked up and wished for something that could tell him how to quit Ian. He had sought it in Mexico. He buried the pieces of him that loved Ian on that dusty road in Texas and let himself fall into the hardness of a life on the run. He chased him away with tequila and men and sometimes redheaded tourists looking for a story to take home. But it was never enough. The friends he made there would peel him off a bar room floor and throw him into the icy water of a shower to restart him. He remembers Sonia, he remembers the day he told her he was leaving, _he can’t be your whole world Mickey_.

When he gets home, with those words in his head, he can’t walk through the door. Instead, he just slams himself down on the porch steps and lights a smoke wondering how long it will take for one of them to work themselves up enough to find the other. That’s what they did. No matter how much they tore each other up, no matter what pulled them away, it felt like nothing when he was standing in front of Ian again hearing that voice.

 _Come here_.

*

On his walk home Ian doesn’t want to think of all the ways he’s fucked up today or this month or this last fucking year. He just wants Mickey. He wants to be wherever Mickey is, and he wants it so bad he could combust. So instead he tries to calm himself. Tries to do what his therapist had told him, **be grateful for the time**. It was something they had talked about a lot, being mentally ill and reclaiming what lost minutes.

Back when he was younger there were days and weeks that he could barely recall. Moments beginning and ending but with deep, dark holes between them. He would open his eyes to an unfamiliar space with unfamiliar people and he chased it so that he didn’t have to cope with it. But now- now he was recognizing that time was a gift for him. While the world might shake everyone else, he could remain stagnant in a moment. He could refuse to follow the alarming pace the universe had set for him in his head. Sure, things will still ache for way too long; everything will feel at a stand-still; and some wounds will eternally be wet. But he still has moments; quiet moments that he keeps locked inside his head when Mickey had gotten out and come back to him through the window and straight into his embrace.

They hadn’t exactly flowed into living together considering Mickey could be a fucking dickhead and Ian always left his pants on the floor beside the bed, _“Could you pick your shit up before I trip and fucking die!”_

But it was **everything**.

There were days Ian would come home after work when it had been pouring rain and his skin was drenched but Mickey was napping on the couch. His body relaxed, his face soft, and Ian would pull down the quilt that Lip half-assed back when he was knitting to curb the alcoholism. Some Saturdays when he would come home from one of his early morning runs, he could hear the faint sound of the radio and Mickey making pancakes in the kitchen. When he walked in, Mickey’s hips would be swaying subtly, and Ian always watched until he got caught. _Stop being so fucking gay and help me firecrotch._ Ian wondered if it had been something he picked up in Mexico. He pictured Mickey surrounded by a family of faceless people in a room of bright colours playing loud music. He would feel an ache so deep he might keel over but then there was Mickey pulling him in and handing him a spatula.

There were so many mornings Ian would wake up to the sound of the shower, and so many nights falling asleep to Mickey’s breathing against his skin.

It could have been perfect.

But Ian can feel the quiet moments he holds onto slipping away as he realizes how tainted he has made them. Back then, he knew the walls were still there for Mickey no matter how many times Mickey may have pressed himself up against Ian’s back. His lips hot and wet on Ian’s neck, and his hands skimming under the band of Ian’s sweats. Ian would feel himself deep inside Mickey; would be staring at his face while his eyes are closed and his head is thrown back, _“I’m so fucking in love with you Mick.”_

Mickey’s lips would uptick just ever so much, his voice a breathy whisper. _“I know fuck.”_

Ian had wondered then if Mickey would ever say it aloud again. And he did, _eventually_.

But now, feeling the quiet moment that should have calmed him slip away, after watching Mickey walk away from him and after walking home with his chest so tight he can barely breath, all Ian can wonder is if he’ll ever hear it again.

*

When Ian gets home, he doesn’t know what to do so he sits on the edge of his bed. **No, not his** , _theirs_ , _their_ bed. The papers are burning in his hand and he’s wondering why he couldn’t just sign them. He can hear the voice in his head that was shouting at him when he was still in at that counter. _Just do it. Just pick up the pen and write, goddammit._ They were right motherfucking _there_. He had Mickey beside him. **His Mickey,** who had waited nearly a fucking decade, who had done _everything_ to get back to him. _For gods sake_ , Ian was the one who had proposed! His stupid idea to lean across that grimy table and pull Mickey into him like he had wanted to for years.

He pauses and wonders for a second if maybe he’s just manic. If he can blame his mania for throwing him and Mickey into some sort of a hell spiral again but he picks up his pills, picks up his journal, and checks his alarms. **Nope**. Everything’s in check. So, why was he such a fucking idiot? Why couldn’t he just do it? _For Mickey_?

When he closes his eyes, he hears Mickey’s words and he sees Monica at the fore front of his mind. He flinches again; clutching his hands more tightly and he can already feel the red marks his nails will leave in his palm.

 _You’re crazy_.

Yeah. He was. Well, he could be. He knows he had been a fucking lot back then; that sure, he had it under control now but that didn’t mean forever. He _knows_ this. He feels it just beneath the surface of his skin and he tries to stop the rapid thumping in his chest at all the images that just assault him.

Days in a future he doesn’t want where he’s completely soaked them dry of all their savings because the deep, dark, twisty part of him thought it would be a great idea to go on a week-long bender at the Waldorf. Days where Mickey’s pulling doubles and triples just to make up the rent that Ian can’t offer because his meds stopped working and he’s lulled himself into a depression so deep he’s almost thankful he has no energy because his mind is trying to get him to walk straight off the balcony. _Then you can fly_.

He doesn’t want that; doesn’t want Mickey to be **trapped** , to be **tied** to him, to be **sinking** with him. He **can’t** hurt Mickey that way again. He _won’t_.

Her words have been raging in his head because of it.

_Like it breaks their heart just to look at you._

_Like it breaks their heart just to look at you._

_Like it breaks their heart just to look at you._

_*_

When he opens his eyes, he’s a little confused to be standing outside but he knows where his feet have taken him instantly. The day is crossing that point into dusk and the wind is nipping but there’s still some warmth in the air. So, he sits on the matted grass that’s still more dirt than grass at this point and stares at the stupid broken headstone.

He’s hoping it means something that his feet brought him here; that maybe his mom will tell him _something_. Or she’ll give him something. Hope maybe? Faith? Just some kind of goddamn sign that he’s not as doomed as she was.

He imagines all the moments he had her when he hadn’t wanted her. All the pent-up irritation to mask the hurt he felt- that they _all_ felt. She parachuted. That’s what he had told her the last time he saw her. Parachuting into his fucking life; free falling and hurling at him like a goddamn meteor on fucking fire. Not caring who she destroyed when she hit the ground.

But there’s the part of her that tugs at his heart. Not because she’s his mom but because she knew him. She really knew the piece of him no one else could understand and he- **fuck** , he can feel his throat closing and his chest tightening again- he wishes he just had one more moment. A little more time to ask her why she couldn’t pull it together. Why love wasn’t enough?

But then he hears her. In a memory long since lost to him. Much more clearly. Soft and sure.

_“I want love for you.”_

He wonders somewhere if she even knew what love was.

And then realizes easily enough that while maybe she hadn’t, **he did.**

*


	2. Come here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am covered in freckles, you are covered in scars. I call yours beauty lines, you call mine stars.

After a brief stop at the Alibi with Liam and a man who probably shouldn’t have been carrying as much product on him as he was in the south side of Chicago, Ian gets home. He’s got two rings resting in a box gripped tightly in his hand and he feels like his heads swimming or his feet are locked on a tight rope or maybe he’s just fucking drowning. He’s not really sure, but either way, it’s a lot. And he doesn’t want to believe he’s lost Mickey before he has a chance to make it right. With the rings, maybe he has **time**.

Liam breezes past him but Ian stops at the bottom of the stairs and takes a deep breath. It had all flashed through Mickey’s eyes that day, those ridiculously beautiful blue eyes- _joy, trust, anger, pain, ache_. Ian wishes he could go back before he had burned him; before he had burned _them_.

“A pity party huh? Care if I join?”

His head jolts up and he feels his hand instinctively rise to his face to wipe away the evidence of whatever feelings have crossed it while standing in the darkness of his home and the relentless pounding of his thoughts. Lip is leaning against the frame of the doorway between the kitchen and the living room looking at him, a cigarette already lit in his hand, already being offered out to Ian.

Ian snorts, taking a few strides across the room to take a drag from the cigarette and letting the burn in his lungs ground him a little.

"I never really understood it you know?" Lip's still leaning against the wall, the dim yellow light of the kitchen behind him, "You and Milkovich."

Ian hums, he knows his brother didn't get it, that no one in his family really did. He knows his brother saw Mickey exactly how Mickey wanted to be seen. How the image of a violent, homophobic thug had stuck and clashed so completely with the soft mother fucker that was his younger brother.

"But after he brought you back. From the club, from that edge you seemed to be sitting on, I think- I think I get it now."

Ian peers down at Lip whose got his brow furrowed but soft look on his face. He can't help but smirk, "Oh you do huh?"

“Mickey’s what you need."

Ian feels his body tense for a moment. His jaw locks, his eyes burn again as he turns to Lip, passing the cigarette back.

"And you’re what he needs."

Ian opens his mouth to say something, to tell Lip that he knows that already. But the words stick in his throat as Lip lifts the cigarette from his fingers, the softness of his face turning somber.

"You know you’re not Monica, right?”

He feels a shudder run up his body, his voice is so quiet he feels like the world might break if he says what he knows is true, “I can be though.”

Lip takes another drag and tilts his head to the side as the smoke rushes out of him, “Maybe you’re just the good parts of her? The parts we never really got to see because she was so out of her fucking mind all the time.”

Ian grunts out a laugh again at days they spent in this exact room during their childhood. Days of Monica spinning around the room sprinkling the carpet with glitter which is probably still there if you look hard enough. Days of her piling all the furniture in the house together in the living room to make the world’s largest fort for them.

He’s staring at his feet when Lip breaks the silence again, “I think you should marry him.”

Ian nods gently.

_Yeah, he really should._

*

When Lip finally shuffles out the back door to a life he has outside, a life he’s trying his hardest to live without fucking it up as Gallaghers always eventually do, Ian sits on the couch. Everyone thinks he should marry Mickey; everyone thinks that he’s crazy to be worried about his illness because Mickey gets it. Micky is not going to run; he’s never been the one to run from this.

But Ian can’t help the familiar tightness in his chest as he wrings his hands together.

“For fucks sake,” he softly curses as he rests his face in the palms of his hands, a wetness there for what feels like the hundredth time today.

Even if he can get past the fact that this illness is stitched to the bottoms of his feet like a shadow always waiting to crawl up, slip inside and drive him around for a little while. Even if he can ignore that welt of insecurity that lies so freshly beneath his skin; he still wonders because it’s fucking **marriage**.

When they had stood in city hall he was thinking **married.** He was thinking protection and keeping Mickey beside him and no more prison walls. But Mickey- Mickey was thinking _marriage_ like a future, like a forever, like just the two of them _til death do us part_. And Ian wants that. He’s wanted that since Mickey, with grease marks and dirt on his stupid face, saddled up next to him on that damn couch- thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder- and told him to _watch and learn_. Ian feels like he’s been doing that every second of his life with Mickey. _Fuck_ \- he couldn’t remember how many nights he spent giddy at the thought of a _tomorrow_ with Mickey. That version of him, before the diagnosis and the army and Monica and fucking prison, _ached_ for Mickey.

And Ian still aches for Mickey that way.

Beneath the several layers of self-doubt and anger and guilt, he thinks he’ll _always_ ache for Mickey.

He _knows_ he will and if that isn’t enough of an answer, then what else is?

*

“You're a fucking idiot Gallagher. You know the answer to that stupid fucking question.”

He calls Mandy while he's still sitting in the darkness of his living room not entirely aware what time it is because the anxiety that’s building inside him makes feel like the answer to whether they should get married is out of reach. There’s no fine line, there’s just an unknown and he can’t jump without an answer. He had spent half his life jumping and not thinking. Mickey was deserved _more_.

“I fucked up Mandy. I don’t- He just- We-”

“ **You broke his heart**.”

Ian pauses, it almost hurts _more_ to hear someone else say it, so the next words come out harsh, “Don’t you think I **fucking** know that?”

“Okay so stop being so goddamn sensitive-”

“I am _not_ -”

“ **Ian**. You’re soft as fuck, shut the hell up.”

Ian laughs a little, he knows Mandy can tell he’s worked himself up and his head is all over the place and the combination of nicotine and caffeine from the day is making him jittery.

“Jesus Christ. You know what it means for Mickey to _want_ to marry you? To _want_ to wear that ring on his finger?"

Ian thinks he stopped breathing somewhere down the line at Mandy’s words.

"Stop letting all the bullshit get in the way.”

She hangs up before Ian even has a chance to open his mouth.

*

Ian had texted Mickey to meet him at the dugouts. He wanted to be romantic, make some sort of grand gesture, hell- he’s got the rings in his fucking pocket and the speech in his head. He’s ready, _he’s so ready now_. But fuck, the asshole had never made it easy on him before, why start? So, instead of sweeping Mickey off his feet like you’re supposed to when you’ve got the love of your life and the future finally mapped out in your stupid head, they’re fucking **wrestling** in the grass.

“You’re un- _fucking_ -believable”

Mickey had gotten a good clean hit right to the side of Ian’s head, but Ian had gotten one in too and now they were both trying to get the upper hand on the other rolling on their backs. Ian’s trying to get him to stop fucking swinging long enough to talk so, he uses the leverage of his lower body to pin down Mickey’s legs, grip his forearms and slam them into the ground around Mickey’s head.

“Would you just let me TALK you son of a bitch!”

Mickey stills underneath him, and Ian rolls off him with a huff. His back hits the ground, the soreness of Mickey’s fist connecting with his face starting to resonate all over. He peers over at Mickey whose chest is huffing; he’s got his forearms resting across his waist, his hands folded together at the centre of his body and his eyes are closed. Ian steadies his gaze on Mickey for a moment, looking at the way the sun catches him, partly in light and partly in darkness as he lies there. As much as he wants to talk, Ian doesn’t want to disturb him yet, so he turns his head back towards the sky and breathes deeply. He lets his eyes close, hoping Mickey breaks the silence to hear him out rather than stalking off again.

But as soon as his eyes close they’re jolting open at the feeling of Mickey’s legs straddling him. He can feel one of Mickey’s hands moving to intertwine with his so they’re resting next to Ian’s head. His other hand presses flat and open on Ian’s chest. And he’s kissing him. It’s soft and gentle and languid and Ian can feel the hot coil in the pit of his stomach start to burn. Mickey’s opening up his mouth and tilting his head up with nothing more than the unhurried movement of his lips. Ian’s completely lost in it. He can barely focus on the way Mickey slowly grinds down against him or the way Mickey’s grip tightens in his hand. But his body is definitely responding. His hips are moving up to meet Mickey’s and his open palm has moved to grip Mickey’s hip, to slide and grasp his ass the more his hips twist.

But then Mickey’s hand pulls from his and moves to rest against his chest alongside his other hand. Ian’s eyes blink open to Mickey looking down at him, those pale blue eyes staring almost hesitantly but more angrily. Mickey takes a deep breath and deflates slightly as Ian relaxes his grip on Mickey’s hip. He knows Mickey’s tired; his eyes are dark, and that often means he hasn’t been sleeping. But Mickey also seems insistent with his stare, _talk motherfucker_.

“When I proposed, I was thinking that I **love** you and I need- I need to **protect** you. And when the need to protect you slipped away from us, I thought,” he can feel his throat tighten, “I thought that marrying you would be like signing your fuckin death sentence Mick.”

He can see how quickly Mickey’s mouth tightens, how his eyes narrow, how his spine stiffens, “Here we _fuckin_ go-”

Mickey is moving up off him to stand before Ian has a second but then Ian’s moving just as urgently and he’s standing with Mickey’s wrist tightly in his hand, pulling him back towards him, “Just shut the fuck up and listen!”

Mickey’s eyes go wide, but his mouth turns back into a tight line and Ian sighs, relaxing his grip again but still letting the feel of Mickey's skin agains this wave over him, “I know you want to take care of me- good times and bad, thick and thin, sickness and health, all that shit. Right?” Mickey lifts his chin slightly, tenses his jaw, possibly a nod, maybe not, but Ian will take it.

“I want that too. God, _I want that_. And I want to take care of you Mick. But I- well I just didn’t think you knew what that meant. Not really. How uneven we’d **_always_** be.”

Mickey’s voice is harsh, “I know how to **fucking** take care of you.”

Mickey pulls his wrist out of Ian’s grip and drops so he’s sitting in the grass. Ian moves to sit too, side-by-side with Mickey, looking out over a baseball diamond he had seen in so many different lights. Ian moves his hand to touch Mickey’s thigh, Mickey’s head swivels and their eyes connect.

“I know you took care of me. And I hurt you. All the time. My mom was- she always-,” Ian pauses to take a breath- “She fuckin broke us, okay Mick? Every time she left or stole from us or- fuck Mick, when I saw her in the kitchen that day. You know?”

Ian bristles at the memory and takes a deep breath hoping to collect himself; his eyes flutter closed but he feels Mickey’s fingers brush against his own. He remembers telling Mickey about that day and the way Mickey held him. He hopes to give Mickey that same grace now.

“I don’t wanna do that to you Mick. I don’t wanna _keep_ doing that to you. Because I have been. I've been fucking _breaking_ you and I never wanted that. You deserve so much fucking better than that.”

Ian opens his eyes to look at Mickey again. He reaches his hand into his pocket and Mickey’s eyes move to focus on the movements rather than his face, his lips parting slightly when the box comes into view.

“I couldn’t protect you. Not from Terry, not from the cops, not from fuckin prison. The least I could do was protect you from me.”

Mickey’s voice is as gentle as his finger son Ian's hand, “Ian.”

“But I get it now.”

Mickey's eyes stare intently at the box that Ian is rolling in his hand and Ian raises his eyes to watch him; watch how quickly the heated glares have fallen and turned soft.

“I visited my mom and- well I remember what she told me back then. I had told her about you and me and all this shit and she told me that the most important thing,” he flips the box open with his eyes still on Mickey whose eyebrows raise, whose eyes widen- “was to find somebody to love. And make sure that somebody loves me back for who I am.”

He reaches into the box to grab one of the silver bands, "And I have."

He sees Mickey's eyes flicker to the rings, chewing on his lower lip, “You proposing Gallagher?”

A small smile breaks across Ian’s face and Mickey can’t help the way his own mouth breaks into one too.

Mickey reaches his hand towards the ring in Ian's fingers which is glinting in the setting sun. Ian has heard before that in moments like this you’re supposed to feel the buzz of electricity or something practically ethereal but honestly, all he feels is **tethered** and **certain** and **_happy_**.

“I told you I needed time. And I do- there’s a lot of things that I- that _we_ will have to face and fix and whatever. But this- you and me- isn’t one of those things.”

Ian moves to slide the ring on Mickey’s finger, “I love you Mickey Milkovich. More than anything.” As soon as the ring slips over Mickey’s knuckle he feels Mickey moving to push him backwards again. With Mickey’s body pressing against him again, before he can even catch his breath, he feels his skin tingle. Mickey’s hands are around his neck slotting their mouths together and everything clicks into place. Mickey’s body falls between his legs, chest to chest, heart to heart. **_Finally_**.

From the moment he had seen Mickey at the dug-out he had just wanted to lean into the gravity that he has always been for Ian. So, in this moment, he does. He responds eagerly. He presses his lips roughly against Mickey’s. He opens his mouth and lets himself fall into the heat of Mickey’s tongue and lips and hands. He runs his palms up Mickey’s back and lets his thighs tightly press against Mickey’s hips. He can feel his heartbeat through his shirt, and he thinks that maybe- just maybe, he can protect Mickey from the whirlwind he knows he can be… even if he **stays**.

As Mickey pulls back slightly, their noses brushing, their foreheads resting together Ian huffs out a laugh, “You didn’t even let me ask.”

Mickey’s eyes blink open, his voice is low and husky and Ian's skin heats at the sound of it, “I’ll marry you. Of course, I’ll fuckin marry you.”

Then Mickey’s grasping around for something beside them and coming back up just as quickly to grasp Ian’s hand. Ian watches Mickeys face as he feels him slip the cool metal band onto his finger. At the light in Mickey’s eyes, at the warmth he feels spread throughout him, all he can do is whisper, “ ** _Come here_**.”

*

When they had gotten home, Ian had barely taken a second before he was licking his way into Mickey’s mouth; gripping his hips and his neck and pulling them together. He had fucking _worshipped_ him; had let his legs drag over the curves of Mickey’s body like he’d finally found an altar he was more than willing to pray at. He had taken his time spreading Mickey out on their bed with his fingers and tongue and that relentless fucking mouth. He had Mickey panting and begging- _Fuck Ian please, please_ \- had turned his mind to a mess of wanting him. Then he had slid inside him with one hand gripping Mickey’s thigh pushing him back until Mickey’s body arched up into him. With their eyes locked together and his hands gripping Ian’s neck to seal their lips together Ian had thrust into him. _I fucking love you Gallagher_. He knows it had left Ian breathless, left him feeling like his chest was going to explode, because Mickey felt it. They felt _so fucking right_.

When they fall back to earth and the sheen of Ian’s skin against his own is too much, they roll away from each other. They’re lying in their bed and Ian’s arm stretches out so it’s under the back of his head, the back of his neck. He’s lying on his back but Ian’s on his side stretching out the length of his body but curving into Mickey. He lets his eyes close at the same time that Ian’s other arm moves up his chest. His palm is still hot as it runs up his sensitive skin. Mickey feels Ian’s thumb brush against his ear, his fingers softly spreading to scratch where his hairline runs on the back of his neck. Their faces are so close together and just because he can, just because he hadn’t for much too long, Mickey leans up to press his lips to Ian’s.

He feels Ian’s palm move to rest against his cheek as he does so; the cold metal of the band on his finger makes his cheek tingle and his heart stutter. He feels the way Ian’s mouth curves into a smile as his lips rest against Ian’s skin. When he pulls back, Ian’s hand drags down his neck and their eyes meet. Mickey can’t help the ways his lips curve just so or the way he breaks into a smile when Ian’s fingers move to rest against his neck, when Ian’s thumb brushes against his lower lip. Staring into those deep blue green eyes he wants to freeze time. 

Someone had told him once that you can figure out a lot about a person in the way they leave you, but you can figure out even more in the way they come back. Mickey finds solace in the truth of that- and in the truth of Ian, it had taken them a decade to get here, but it was worth it.

*

The sun is probably ready to come up any minute but lying in their bed under the familiar roof of the Gallagher house, with the familiar breeze of a slightly jarred window and the soft white noise of nothing, Ian lies awake.

The last few times he had lied awake in this bed he was in pain; his body was sore, his head was pounding, his eyes were so dry they burned. But not right now. Not with Mickey pressed up against the side of him, his head resting partly on Ian’s shoulder, partly on his chest and his hand limp over Ian’s heart. Ian can feel the weight of his ring and that’s what keeps him awake.

For some reason, the fear had dissipated, and he’s feels so impossibly full. Way too full to sleep - too much, too jittery and too fucking **hopeful**.

Sure, there’s still some anxiety crawling around inside of him. He won’t lie about that. He thinks there’s always going to be this fear that he’ll set this all aflame again; fear that Mickey’s going to realize this is all a big mistake and run. But as he tightens his arm around Mickey and lets the feel of his breathing relax him, Ian calms. He doesn’t want to think about that. Not right now. He wants to picture an apartment with bare rooms and battered blinds where nothing but a mattress, a few pizza boxes and a couple empty beer bottles litter the floor. He wants to picture how soon that apartment will be filled with utensils and a couch and a television. He wants to picture how that even though the first night they get there the apartment will be bare they’ll make love- they’ll make love with their hands gripped tightly together and Mickey’s name falling off his lips.

As he lets himself drift into sleep in the warm embrace of Mickey and the comfortable images of a future, he thinks about his mom again. He thinks about Frank’s words the day they all said goodbye _._

_She taught me how to live._

_She changed everything._

Until now, he had never understood his father more.

**Author's Note:**

> https://carpetheotherfandoms.tumblr.com


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